Satellite News

The world-wide Ground Mission Segment providing all Galileo navigation messages has completed a full-scale hardware and software migration to version V2.0, and is now fully operational again.

Galileo’s fifth satellite – recently salvaged from the wrong orbit to begin navigation testing – has been combined with three predecessors to provide its very first position fix.

ESA said that new commercial receivers and related products can now be rigorously tested to pinpoint any vulnerability to counterfeit satnav signals – known as spoofing – so that countermeasures can then be developed.

The latest addition to Galileo’s world-wide ground infrastructure has been made in the mid-Atlantic, on Portugal’s Santa Maria island in the Azores.

The in-orbit validation of Galileo has been achieved: Europe now has the operational nucleus of its own satellite navigation constellation in place – the world’s first civil-owned and operated satnav system, ESA said.

Thales Alenia Space announced the signature of a contract with Telespazio worth more than EUR120 million, within the scope of a contract for the supply of EGNOS services (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), signed by ESSP (European Satellite Services Provider) and Telespazio in July 2013.

EU Member States have begun their independent testing of the most accurate and secure signal broadcast by the four Galileo navigation satellites in orbit.

Telespazio, a Finmeccanica/Thales company, has won a contract worth EUR216 million with the European Satellite Service Provider (ESSP) as part of the EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) satellite navigation programme.